Reloading Dies for 500 S&W Special

[RGMJ]

Hi Guys,

I am planning to buy some 500 S&W Special cases from Graf. I wonder if I can use my existing 500 S&W dies for the Special. I have the Lee die set.

The 500 S&W special is about 0.33 in shorter than the standard 500 S&W. I might have a problem seating and/ or crimping the Special using regular dies since it's much shorter.

What do you think? Any solutions aside from buying a new die set (RCBS has a dedicated 500 S&W Special dies). How can I tweak my Lee dies to load a shorter case ?

Thanks for any reply !

[David2011]

Sorry; I can't answer your question about dies but wanted to pass along something I learned about sizing .500 S&W while helping a friend reload. Even with a Rock Chucker II it took a lot of effort to size the cases. We tried several lubes including Imperial, Dillon spray lube and RCBS case lube. The best sizing lube we found was straight lanolin rubbed on with the fingers. The effort at the press handle was probably half as much as with any other lube we tried. (We didn't try STP.) A very little bit goes a long way.

Totally removed the rest of my original post. Dyslexia struck again. I read that you were using Special dies and magnum cases, just opposite of what you wrote. The answers below look good.

[str8wal]

If there is a problem it will be with the crimp. If so, I expect you could grind some off the crimp die to shorten it.

[3Gunnah]

If you are seating and crimping in seperate steps ( best way) then your size die should work fine ( no different then 44 special in 44 mag die) your seat die should work as long as you have enough downward movement in the seat stem. Belling will depend on the press ( single or progressive). But as stated above crimp could be an issue. You could cut down the die and if it is not a Lee factory crimp die you could more than likely use it for 500 mag still. But having a seperate complete die set in a tool head is much more efficient.